It's early morning.
A team formed an encirclement from a distance, surrounding the village where Ma Liang had stayed on the south side of the blockade ditch, in the dead of night.
The enemies in the village actually lit fires, and several houses were still smoking. Needless to say, the puppet soldiers demolished the houses to light fires for warmth.
Captain Geng's eyes were burning, and with a wave of his hand, his two team members crawled on the ground and slowly approached the village.
Ma Liang, who was next to him, immediately stopped him in a low voice: "Wait a moment, something is wrong. The whistleblower walking around is a dummy!"
Captain Geng asked the two team members to stop in the field and turned to look at Ma Liang: "Wang Sanzhu said he would send someone to contact us in the evening, but we haven't seen anyone from them come yet!"
Ma Liang handed the binoculars to Captain Geng.
After Captain Geng took it, he looked at the puppet sentry at the entrance of the village carefully: "These guys who are afraid of death can really figure it out... But since the dummy is moving back and forth, there should be someone hiding nearby to make the dummy move!"
Ma Liang said smoothly: "You just said that Wang Sanzhu's people didn't come out to contact us. Maybe there are Japs and puppet troops in the village. Maybe they can't come out..."
Captain Geng shook his head: "The hearts of the Wang family and his son are as black as coal in Xishan. I cannot trust their words at all. Who knows if they have any conspiracy!"
Ma Liang nodded... How could such a big village accommodate puppet troops and so many bandits? "When you say that, I also feel something is wrong. Tian Sanqi said that the retreating enemies are roughly the same as those of us on the battlefield. The estimated number of enemies is off by four to five hundred. If all the enemies left behind are in the village... but why is there no movement at all?"
"When the enemy retreated, our people followed them. It is absolutely true that there are puppet troops in the village, but we don't know how many there are..."
Ma Liang looked at the fire in the village and suddenly thought of a way: "That's not easy. Why don't you just throw a grenade in and try it?"
Captain Geng was stunned for a moment: "Other than a grenade, who else can throw a grenade so far...a distance of two to three hundred meters to the village?"
"The puppet soldiers are afraid of death. The sentries they arranged will never dare to stay outside the village. I will try to stage a feint attack first."
"Forget it, I'll think of a solution..."
...
Li Huanzhang led the team and left Zhaozhuang Village at noon and headed southeast.
The mighty team occasionally stopped to take a break, change bandages for the wounded, and replenish some food.
It took more than ten hours to walk less than sixty miles.
Until midnight, the team was still walking in the wilderness.
The situation here is slightly different from that in the north. This is a drought-stricken area!
The rivers flowing through the villages have dried up, and the cracked earth is like the wrinkles on the face of a weather-beaten old man. Most of the wells in the villages have no water, and the water in a few deep wells can only be used for food and drink. Where can it be provided? livestock and crops.
Most of the people on the plains had no way to survive, and had no choice but to flee. Without people, the Japanese had little interest in these barren lands, so that some of the artillery towers built in the past few years were not guarded by puppet troops.
The Eighth Route Army struggled to develop base areas on the plains that the Japanese were too lazy to sweep.
If a person wants to survive, he must eat and drink. If he can survive without water for a day or two, how can he survive ten days and a half later? Who could have imagined that the Yellow River, which our ancestors have relied on for generations, would change its course, and what would follow was that almost no rain fell for a year. The plains that were already suffering from wars would be devastated in a short period of time due to lack of water. Turn thousands of miles of fertile fields into barren land!
Li Huanzhang kept stopping in front of the team, waiting for the team to pass before running to the front of the team, constantly reminding the team to pay attention to safety along the way.
A bandit saw Li Huanzhang on the roadside again and stopped quickly: "Sir, I have something to say!"
Li Huanzhang looked around and cursed: "What's the matter? I've only rested for less than an hour. If you talk to me about shit and urine again, I'll kill you!"
The bandit soldier said in a loud voice: "Hey, how can I bother you with those trivial matters, sir? I see that you are working very hard. Do you think we can discuss it? Didn't the Eighth Route Army say they will be given two oceans when they leave? We don't want oceans now." , can you let us go first?"
But the soldier next to him interrupted: "If you don't want to join the Eighth Route Army, of course we will let you go. We agreed that you will get two oceans and not a penny less! However, you must study in our base area for three days..."
The bandit soldier still looked at Li Huanzhang with a mournful face: "Oh, hey, you still have to watch over us when I follow you, and when I stay in your base area for three days, you still have to take care of our food and shelter, and you have to pay two oceans in vain? I Aren’t you saying you are short-sighted?”
The soldier in custody behind him stabbed the stopped bandit with his gun: "Why are you so wordy? Get out of here!"
"Hey, don't worry. If it doesn't work out, I'll give you five oceans. Please be kind to me, sir. I have an eighty-year-old mother above me, and..."
The soldier next to him had his gun horizontally and was ready to hit him with the butt at any time: "What do you say? I'll give you two butts! Our Eighth Route Army keeps its word, do you think it's a business deal?"
"Stop!" Li Huanzhang immediately stepped forward to stop the soldier's movements, and the three of them got together as if to break up a fight. Li Huanzhang's voice was not quiet: "Don't worry, as long as we verify that you have indeed not done anything bad, then We can consider letting you go home early!"
The bandit soldier looked around and suddenly lowered his voice: "You have to pay attention, some of the bandits left secret notes along the way. Someone will rob the road tonight!"
After saying that, he was pushed by the soldiers escorting him and followed the group of prisoners in front.
Li Huanzhang frowned. He had obviously made an agreement with the work team, but he didn't expect that the bandits were still there. They would release them after they arrived at the base area for review. They couldn't wait for these three days? What kind of game is this?
Do they really have a conspiracy? But in this barren land that had just been sifted by the puppet army, is there anything that the bandits would like?
The team continued to go southeast in the dark night, walking another ten miles ahead, crossing the Jindi River that had long since dried up, and then entered the edge of the sandy area base area, where there were militiamen who had been arranged to respond in advance.
Half an hour later.
Panting heavily, a soldier rushed into the exhausted team from the darkness behind, shouting urgently: "Platoon Commander Li, where is Platoon Commander Li? Platoon Commander Li..."
Li Huanzhang on the roadside grabbed the running soldier: "Why are you panic... I'm here!"
The soldier looked around and lowered his voice: "A group of bandits are coming from behind! There are at least two to three hundred of them, and we can't stop them!"
Li Huanzhang was stunned. Most of the prisoners taken away this time were bandits. Based on what insiders said, did they really want to take these prisoners away?
These guys chose to attack when the team was most tired, and it looked like they were going to be the bad guys this time!
Damn it...you can't believe what these bandits say!
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